Ichthyo- is a word-forming element meaning "fish" from the Latinized form of Greek ikhthys "a fish.”
We have:
ichthyology (ik-thee-ol’-uh-jee) - the study of fish
ichtheology - the study of fish as holy metaphor (kidding - you know I make stuff up, but I will always tell you when it is Verbaloney).
ichthyoid - a fish or fishlike vertebrate
ichthyosaur - any of various extinct marine reptiles of the group Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia of the Mesozoic Era, having a long flexible body with fins and an elongated, toothed snout.
ichthyomancy - a form of divination involving the head or entrails of fishes
ichthyolite - low-fat fish (kidding) - it’s a fish fossil
I created my own combining form for this week’s whacked wet words which have been unceremoniously tossed into the idiomatic agitation cycle of my weird word washer: ichthyogrins. I hope it works!
What the heck is a Minced Metaphor?
I’ve heard them called malaphors and malaprops, but I strongly disagree with using malaprop as any part of a description; first, because the term is ill-applied in an ironic twist (malaprops are intentional attempts to sound grand); and second, because mal itself, meaning “bad” is simply untrue—fun with words cannot be bad!
I’d go for something like risiphor or ridiphor, using the Latin risus, past participle of ridere "to laugh," meaning "laughable, capable of exciting laughter, comical" + pherein "to carry, bear" (from PIE root *bher- (1) "to carry," also "to bear children"). The result? “bearing laughter offspring.” Perfect!
As a bonus, who could resist saying, “That is patently risiphorous!” or “Another great ridiphor, Emily!”
Although it bothers some who actually get these expressions right, the endless combinations that the rest of us come up with deserve a wide-girthed mirth berth.
Even though these might technically appear to be…well…mistakes, I think they show a lack of rigidity at worst, and a creative brilliance at best. Some combine up to three otherwise independent sayings.
As my daughter used to say when she was but a wee sass, “Mom, that tickles my timbers!” In fact, here is one of hers that we still love to bring up at holidays:
“Dad, I think you're trying to fry a bigger fish than you can catch!”
Happily, it’s genetic.
Don't feed me a fish story!
They got their pound of flesh feeding frenzy.
There are plenty of fish in the sea, but you're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Some fish raise their heads above the parapet.*
It's like fishing for a camel in a haystack.
* and taunt you, you English kanigguts!
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Nicely done! I'm looking forward to the companion piece using the homonyms formed by replacing the "h" with a "k"; e.g,
icktheology: The set of principles motivating Mike Johnson
"It's like fishing for a camel in a haystack." is my favorite out of this group. It brings to mind a very surreal scene from which Salvador Dali could have gotten a good painting.